Captain Sig Hansen from Deadliest Catch talks coronavirus pandemic and crab fishing surveys. Plus: our moon has a tail!
Captain Sig Hansen from “Deadliest Catch” discusses the surprising ways the coronavirus pandemic made the world’s most dangerous job even harder. Then, you’ll learn about our moon’s comet-like tail that collides with Earth every month.
Learn more about Deadliest Catch, Tuesdays at 8 PM ET/PT on Discovery
The moon has a comet-like tail and it collides with the Earth each month by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-deadliest-catch-navigates-a-deadly-pandemic-w-captain-sig-hansen
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, Captain Sig Hansen from “Deadliest Catch” will discuss the surprising ways the coronavirus pandemic made the world’s most dangerous job even harder. Then, you’ll learn about our moon’s comet-like tail that collides with Earth every month.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The coronavirus pandemic has affected EVERYTHING — even things you wouldn’t expect. Like, get this: the virus is so deadly that even folks with some of the world's deadliest jobs didn't want to mess with it. I'm talking about the crab fishers of Deadliest Catch on Discovery. The newest season premiered just a couple weeks ago, and the season was filmed *during the pandemic*. Today, Deadliest Catch's Captain Sig Hansen will tell us about the many surprising ways that COVID-19 gave them a run for their money — and teach us about sustainability in the process.
[CLIP 5:43]
Again, that was Captain Sig Hansen, one of the stars of "Deadliest Catch.” You can watch Deadliest Catch Tuesdays at 8 / 7 Central on Discovery, and catch up on everything you missed on Discovery-plus. Sign up for your 7-day free trial at discoveryplus-dot-com-slash-curiosity.
The moon has a tail. And astronomers may finally know why the moon’s tail flickers. Was that… was that too much? Okay, I got you. Lemme back up.
Alright, imagine this. The sky is dark. The stars seem to be twinkling especially brightly because the moon is nowhere to be seen. That’s because it’s right between Earth and the Sun, on the other side of the planet from you. So all you see is a deep, dark sky speckled with stars.
At least that’s all human eyes can see. If you look through specialized cameras, you can see a special spot of light in the twilight sky, thanks to the new moon on the other side of the world. Astronomers first spotted it in the ‘90s, and it didn’t take them long to figure out that the spot is really a stream of sodium atoms flying off the moon, like a tail. But only recently did astronomers finally understand why the tail flickers, shining brightly at some times and faintly at others.
See, the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, which means it gets pummeled relentlessly by meteorites. That’s why it’s got all those craters. It turns out that every collision kicks up plumes of sodium atoms. A firehose of photons from the Sun grab those atoms and send them flying out behind the moon, like your hair on a speeding rollercoaster.
That’s the tail.
Earth isn’t involved in this most of the time. But for a few days each month, the moon's tail flies straight into our little planet. At least, it comes close. Earth’s gravity funnels the stream of sodium atoms into a narrow beam that wraps around the planet and flows out the other side. It’s that beam that astronomers can see in the sky.
The moonbeam was originally spotted during a meteor shower in 1998. That led researchers to think that it shines more brightly during meteor showers, seeing as meteors kick up those sodium atoms in the first place. But new data tells a slightly different story.
That data comes from a study that analyzed 21,000 images taken at an observatory in Argentina over the course of 14 years. The researchers concluded that a brighter moonspot can coincide with a meteor shower, but the two don’t always go together. It looks like those meteors don’t always hit the moon hard enough to send extra sodium atoms flying into space and make the spot brighter. It’s actually sporadic meteors, space rocks that aren’t associated with a meteor shower, that cause the moonspot to really get glowing. These rocks can be bigger and faster and hit the moon with way more force.
These new findings probably don’t change much in the scheme of things, but they do indicate an exciting possibility. If a big enough meteor hit the moon with enough force, it could knock so much sodium off the moon that we could look at the sky and see the moon’s tail for ourselves.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s last story was written by Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Don’t miss Deadliest Catch tonight at 8, 7 Central on Discovery! And then, you can catch us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!